ART BTEC 2015 intake!

Monday, 26 November 2012

So you have produced some exciting work in the Alphasemble project, and some of your Fashion Illustration work is taking shape well, but the blog is empty.

Get your works of creative genius online, this is your gallery and the better your contributions are here, the more you are going to impress Universities and Art Colleges next year. You have the password, so get posting!

Work with your templates to create a series of illustrations of your garment/accessory design in the style of Barton Hargreaves and 2 other illustrators (this should result in 6 illustrations in total). Find other illustrators through net research or select from www.art-dept.com Try to use the same media as the illustrator whose style you are adopting, so this may mean working by hand, digitally or employing a combined technique.

Filled Silhouette Illustration

You should also get some reproductions of work by each of the 3 illustrators and complete some analytical research for each one of them (2 pages for each illustrator).

Monday, 19 November 2012

You need to be ready to give your Prezi presentations tomorrow morning. These will be short and sweet as we have lots to get through, you obviously need to prepare your slides and have a few things to say about each of them.Each pair of you are only going to have 3 - 4 minutes, you might find putting together some cue cards helps you remember to cover all the important stuff.Here's a link to a decent presentation from a couple of years ago:http://prezi.com/q7ctlvwueled/cutlery-fashion/Remember to save your images as jpegs before putting them into Prezi, as full resolution photos or PhotoShop documents can slow your presentation right down and make it behave badly.Wednesday - Friday this week we will begin some Fashion Illustration work, you will need to bring cameras and be prepared to strike a few poses!Obviously the main focus of the project so far has been on the moodboards and Prezi, but the work you have been doing should be recorded in your sketchbooks too. Mount photos of your moodboards and Prezi slides in your books and use the material gathered for the boards to create some collage pages.

oSLIDE 2 – Initial findings – what your object is traditionally used for, how it has been used in a fashion context, if at all.

oSLIDE 3 – Your garments – 3 examples of each from current collections – use sites such as style.com fort inspiration and an image of your own found ones – either being worn, on the hanger or on a mannequin, + A simple statement about where yours came from.

oSLIDE 4 – An example of what a collection is - this can be a statement – almost a dictionary definition if you like, or a visual that you can talk about.

oSLIDE 5 – Some ideas as to how you intend to progress from here, i.e. how you will manipulate, deconstruct or multiply your object – remember that this can be on a lateral as well as a literal level too……

The idea of make do and mend is becoming more and more prevalent in modern day society, despite being born from war torn times when people really had to make the best of what they already had as little else was available to them, the concept couldn’t be more valuable today with depleting natural resources, and the constant anxiety of inadvertently increasing the size of our individual carbon footprints. What we are now seeing on both the high street and the catwalk firmly acknowledges that this is a very real problem and one which needs to be addressed and appreciated. The race is on, fifty years ago the earth was populated by half the number of people it is now, by 2050 this number is likely to be increased further, possibly up to 10 billion, and by all estimates there simply won’t be enough resources to go round. Deforestation, depleting food sources and a rampant consumerism are all taking their toll, and did you know that last year alone 1 in 50 people lost their homes due to either, war, natural disaster or foreclosure – this is a scary statistic and none of us are immune to this. It is believed that in the U.K. each year, we throw away an average of two million tonnes of fast fashion clothing that was probably only worn for around six times a piece. Fashion could probably be described as one of man’s biggest failures in the safe guarding of our planet with corporate groups encouraging dream lifestyles of selfishness, apathy, superficiality and greed. Something has to give and something has to change…. Few things touch as many people as fashion; therefore the continuation of what is beginning to emerge through sustainable clothing rests firmly on your shoulders.

Using just a single object which may be commonly found in the home and an existing item of clothing, you are being asked to create a hybrid piece which uses the idea of recycled fashion. Furthermore you will be working alongside other individuals in BOTH of the BTEC groups to develop the idea of a collection.

GUIDELINES

1.The initial stages of this project should be spent on some thorough investigations. First of all you will be allocated your initial departure points for the project. As this is a random selection, your object, garment and fellow collaborators are all purely down to chance, so this could see you working alongside someone you currently know very little about. It is vital however, that you do work closely with your collaborators throughout the duration of the project in order to achieve a believable result, and by not doing so, you risk failing the overall project. This entire week is concerned with gathering material – this should consist of the sourcing of the various varieties of your individual objects, examples of how these may have already been used in fashion and a range of careful studies of these objects, both as photographs and illustrations. As a matter of course you should be thinking all the time about how you will combine them with your item of clothing to create something new and exciting, it will be up to you how flamboyant or understated your ideas/designs are, but you should bear in mind that you are actually going to have to realise one of them! With regards to your allocated garment, you should again be finding as many examples of this as possible and looking for ways that you will be able to adapt your own. Where your garment comes from is entirely up to you, but it must be something which has previously been worn. What you collect/produce is going to be presented as both moodboards and a “prezi” (www.prezi.com) next week, so at this stage it is advisable not to stick anything into your books…Week 1

2.Once you have looked at your objects and garments in finite detail you will be required to present your findings visually, as previously mentioned. It is not always appropriate to hand over a sketchbook to a group when expressing your ideas purely because it is difficult for lots of people to be able to see the work at the same time, so in order to get your ideas across to the rest of the group effectively, you are going to work on a much grander scale! Following the guidelines given you will create a series of moodboards which will explain your ideas and concepts so far. A moodboard is an important tool in the design industry and will often be created at the beginning of a project as a means by which to maintain a constant flow of ideas, yours will be instrumental in helping you to get the most out of this project and will be photographed as you go along, so do make sure that you have a camera at the ready – NO EXCUSES. These images will then be used to create your Prezi, again, guidelines will be given so do not panic, this slideshow will be your first collaborative piece and will require good communication and a well organised plan of action as you will both be working on the same presentation. This will be added to as your projects develop and you will need to follow the checklist provided in order to ensure that you have provided all the necessary information…. The beginning of this week will also see you undertake some sustained investigations into what a collection actually is. Use www.style.com,www.elle.com, http://fashionarchitect.blogspot.com/ , http://www.fashionisspinach.com/http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/ , look specifically at individuals like Hussein Chalayan the late Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Gareth Pugh and Commes des Garcons, for the more alternative in ideas! Sustainable fashion heroes are Gary Harvey, Martin Margiela, Junky Styling, Ciel, and From Somewhere, and this one is just interesting if you want to get a bit more into the magazine side of things – good for layout etc….. http://magculture.com/blog/ . The library also has some amazing books – check out Maison Martin Margiela, Skin and Bones, A century of fashion, Techno textiles volumes 1 & 2, Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed, Fashion at the edge, Fashion: Concept to catwalk, to name but a few! Week 2

3.You are about to take a trip to London and should find some inspiration in both the practitioners you will hear speak and the work that they make – some of course more than others, but I encourage you to use what you have learned to influence what you decide to do for this project, think about Cornelia Parker who explores Gain and loss within her work, where everyday objects gain significance from the fame of their owners, Barton Hargreaves, a Digital Print Tutor at the Royal Academy Schools, who is also an artist and printmaker whose work has developed in parallel with developments in digital technology.Turner prize winner Grayson Perryand how he uses traditional forms such as ceramics and tapestry in unconventional ways to comment on injustice and hypocrisy and to explore ideas such as creativity, taste and class. His work is original and provocative. It incorporates allusions to art history, the art world, consumer culture, class, violence and despair, and Paul Slater, multi award winning illustrator who is ranked amongst the top 10 in the country. Pick two images from each artist/designer and evaluate what you are looking at, try to identify relevant links between their work and your own.I would also like you to select two different fashion illustrators’ work and document it in your sketchbook too, providing analysis on both their work and how you think their style of illustration might be appropriate to your own designs. You should endeavour to produce a design idea of your own in each style too. Following on from this you should now begin to produce further design ideas and start to physically gather more of the same object, and get stuck into manipulating them, seeing what works and what doesn’t work in order to apply it successfully to your garment. Remember to collaborate with your partner throughout –design ideas must actually look like they have come from the same collection! You will possibly need to compromise on things so prepare to be open minded….. There will also be workshops given to help you with your figure drawing, so do not despair! You may also wish to look at www.art-dept.com for further fashion illustration inspiration. Week 3

4.Now, how you go about using your object(s) is up to you – I am looking for clever, inventive, original, technical and carefully engineered results – remember – we are not making costumes for the school play, this is a serious exercise, and the results will be going into your folios, so make the most of it, oh, and BTW, you will all be showing your work on the catwalk after Christmas too, there will be an audience and at least 4 photographers taking your photos – I probably wouldn’t want to look like a plank if I was you! Think about weaving, stretching, melting, burning, adhering, scoring, rolling, wrapping, dissecting, reproducing, representing and smashing as considerations for getting the most out of not only your object, but your imagination too. Update your Prezi. Weeks 3 & 4

5.Following your investigations and trials and tribulations you should now be able to come up with the definitive design – it is now time to make it…..Photograph every stage as you go so that you can continue to update your Prezi appropriately. Take a series of well styled photos of the final outcome – Do not just stand in the studio or corridor to do this, find an appropriate space, even if it means you have to put yourself out doing so, I cannot emphasise enough how even the best design can be completely ruined by a lack of attention to detail in its final documentation…… Use www.art-dept.com to help you in this too – someone like Rankin is really worth looking at, as is showstudio.com & Tim Walker (who is currently exhibiting at Somerset house)…. You could also check out James Carver on www.flickr.com – he is an ex-student, currently studying at London College of Fashion.

Week 5

6.Write a 500-1000 word evaluation of the project – guidance notes will be given. Week 5

MINIMUM SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS:

·1 COMPLETED SKETCHBOOK.

·A SERIES OF MOODBOARDS – PHOTOGRAPHS AS EVIDENCE

·1 COMPLETED PREZI – EACH PARTY SHOULD HAVE IT DOCUMENTED IN THEIR SKETCHBOOKS + PREZI ACCOUNT DETAILS.

Friday, 9 November 2012

This is the list of work you need to complete for the Deadline of Tuesday 13th November at 4.30pm. We will be briefing you on the new project on Monday.

At least 2 pages where you compile examples of
your 5 selected letters and 2 numbers. Try to collect examples from a
range of sources e.g. Newspapers, magazines, font websites. Lay out each
of these pages in a dynamic way. Mix up font sizes, overlap and collage
your letters down, consider copying some letters onto acetate for
overlaying.

Photocopies of your Linear work or prints
worked into with coloured inks and bleach.

Photocopier inverts of your letterform
compositions.

An A3 Gold Card with several prints from it.

Research into the letter/number paintings and
drawings of Jasper Johns (2 pages).

Research into either the Typographic work of
David Carson, or the letterform work of Michael Craig-Martin.

Photographs of your chosen letters and numbers
- you should aim to find at least 2 examples of each one in the environment
around you. One found (e.g. on a sign, notice, advert, vehicle) and one
created (by arranging objects of your choice to represent the
letter/number). Photos of your collected/made letterforms on the lightbox.

Research into the 3D relief work of Frank Stella
(2 pages, get a range of images, a little background information and a
couple of paragraphs of personal analysis of specific pieces).

At least 8 good photos of found/made
lettersforms in the photobooth, using the lightbox, and capturing strong
compositions, dramatic shadows, angles, zoom-ins etc. Printed out and
mounted in your book.

1 curled typeface cut out piece.

At least 1 white card relief composition.

Minimum
of one well resolved grey card relief piece.

Good
photos of all your relief work.

At
least one good tonal drawing in response to your relief work.

Research into two sculptors (background
information, several good images of their work and some personal analysis,
minimum 4 pages, carefully presented.

Planning sketches for your 3D work.

A well finished final 3D sculpture.

Good photos of your final 3D piece, record from
a variety of angles and zoom in for details as well as shots that show the
whole form.